In Seven Truths Trump Taught the World, we asked here, “What is a Christian? Complex as that answer can be, might we simplify it as one who at least attempts to practice the teachings of Christ?… But as the world has witnessed of America since 2016, David Hume’s assessment has…

“The long democratic recession is deepening,” says Freedom House in their annual assessment of democracy’s global retreat. Of 195 nations, the U.S. ranks 61st. After 16-years of decline, 2021 was the worst as tyrannies ascended worldwide. Patrick J. Deneen opens his book Why Liberalism Failed, with a quote from Barbara…

In Susan Shell’s remarkable contribution to Confronting the Constitution, her chapter, “Idealism,” surveys its impact on the American Founding and later Western experience. Through examination of ideals by idealists, Shell considers their approach to “the political problem.” That is, the employment of classical liberal principles used to stabilize large numbers…

“Ours is a nation of liars, John. We lie about the big things, we lie about the small, we lie about it all… Why? Because lies elevate our self-esteem, blame somebody else, defend our tribes, and are worth a lot of money.” Such are the words of a fictional character…

Christianity is under threat in America. Today just half of its young people identify as religious. Over a third of Americans identify as nonreligious, a four-fold increase in 30 years. What threatens Christianity in America is not science, reason, or liberals, but Christians. Widespread pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood, sexual…

In Joseph Hamburger’s contribution to Confronting the Constitution he looks at debates between the 18th century British utilitarians of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and John Austin vs. builders of the US Constitution. The utilitarians had great respect for the new Constitution and its creation, but they also…

As a young Reaganite after Reagan was gone, I’d hurry down the stairs of the building I worked in. …

When I was a small, innocent, and naive boy living in Iowa, I discovered Erich von Däniken’s bestselling book, Chariots of the Gods?. It was full of inexplicables, including ancient geoglyphs recognizable as animals only from high in the sky above Peru’s Nazca Desert. Von Däniken resolved these mysteries with…

In Allan Bloom’s contribution to Confronting the Constitution he depicts the insights of, and threats to, Enlightenment political philosophy posed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Rousseau’s ideas were inspiring and inflammatory to those of his age, and since, though most today don’t know Rousseau as the source of their own outlook…